Feathers and Gilt Are So Effective
by Novocain
Summary: She is poisoned and sickened by the stench of rotted secrets and shame, but she has a lovely French perfume and it's okay. Femmeslash.


**(your craftsmanship is so delicate)**

**. ... .**

Parvati is mad mad mad and in love.

Or she thinks she is in love. And she is right - if the meaning of 'in love' is bent and forced into WANTyou'reMINE and entrancedBYtheFALLofYOURhair. If love is a fragile obsession with the tilt of a chin when amused and an overpowering urge to trace the curve of a breast, then, yes, Parvati is stricken with it.

She is mad mad mad and in love - madly in love and it is hopelessly unreturned.

Because Lavender is straight. She cares about things like gender, and Parvati knows that the sheer staunchness of all of Lavender's beliefs will never allow her to love Parvati even if there ever was a chance.

Parvati doesn't know when it started. Perhaps it was always there; perhaps when Lavender turned to her and smiled (so very lovely and lively and full of love and life) at the very first Welcoming Feast - _hi i'm lavender. lavender brown. i like your butterfly hair piece _- was the instant Parvati wanted her. Oh, yes, she was a child and far too young to have lingering thoughts about the swell of a breast peeking over a lacy bra, but Parvati always loved Lavender's hair and knew the girl's every tell by the time the first week was out.

They are best friends, but they will never be more. And the moment Parvati realizes that - when she sees the distaste subtly coloring Lavender's polite smile at two younger girls who have just started dating, full of blushes and grins and giggles - is one that snaps the columns that hold up her sky. She had thought she could simply reach out and entwine their fingers and whisper to the sun: i'm yours and you're mine, and here is my happiness.

But she was wrong - so terribly, painfully wrong - and the sky has fallen and taken the sun with it. (It's so terribly, painfully funny now that Parvati thinks of it - Lavender never understood why Parvati refused all of her dates to the Yule Ball until Harry asked her. After Lavender had a date.) And she realizes that Lavender can never know - never never never, because Parvati couldn't stand to see that distaste directed at her. To be shunned - to be unable to braid Lavender's beautiful hair or hold her hand steady when she gives the other girl a manicure. No one can know. No one, and if she shrivels a little inside, poisoned and sickened by the stench of rotted secrets and shame, it's okay.

She is surrounded by shards of bright blue and the shattered pieces of a sun. It had always been a two-dimensional dream, hadn't it? Just a dream. (And her nani once told her that dreams are the soul, and she had believed the old woman when she was a little girl. She isn't a little girl anymore, though, and she refuses to believe it. She refuses to believe it and shunts it out of her thoughts when it appears - because wouldn't that mean that her soul is broken as well?) It is a good thing that Parvati is so talented at making things beautiful, so talented at covering imperfection with glitter and hiding cracks in delicate porcelain masks with feathers and gilt.

So she glues her sky back together, and if the end result is messy and sticky and a horrible parody of a dream, that's okay.

She is still Lavender's best friend, after all. And if she isn't allowed to puke at the sight of Lavender making out with various boyfriends in the common room or scream herself into Shiva when the (beautiful, maddening, gorgeous, fabulously catty) girl loses her brain over some stupid boy, it's okay.

It's okay.

Parvati is mad mad mad and in love. She is poisoned and sickened by the stench of rotted secrets and shame, but she has a lovely French perfume and it's okay.

. ... .

**(i'm impressed, darling - i don't even notice the missing pieces)**

* * *

A/N: Written for Rosalyn. Hope this fulfills your request! I'm trying to get out of my great, big, fat, hideous writer's block. So if this sucks too hard, I'm sorry - give me another or tell me to try again. I shouldn't be doing your request when I'm not writing well.

What am I blocking over? _These Are All Things That You Don't Understand. _Argh. I am never promising a specific update day again - my naivete is cured. Gawds, I feel so guilty, but I have absolutely nothing and what I've already written isn't enough for a chapter. Argh. Please, encourage me. Hate mail works too. TAATTYDU is eating my word flow; feed me.


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